I too have recently had similar issues, just this morning (10/28/2024).
I woke up to an email on my phone, that a suspicious payment of $799.99 from Coinbase was being processed. I immediately called the customer support phone number for PayPal provided in the email.
Went through processes with someone claiming to be "David" for about 14 minutes before he asked me to download a program called "Paypal.exe" which I then refused to do, insisting this was beyond suspicious. He attempted to cajole me about how could I find it or him suspicious given we had been speaking for such a long time (this was of course also suspicious). I pointed out it had been only 14 minutes at that point. I demanded he pass this up the ladder to his supervisor, he attempted to dissuade me, and then relented. His supposed supervisor then attempted the same thing, and when I insisted I would not install their little app to get their IT team remote access to my PC, he asked me to hold. I waited a few minutes, I could still hear all of the call center noise in the background, and then he hung up on me.
Tried the second number and again got someone saying their name was "David", who insisted they were not the same person as before. They began to look up information on my account, and then abruptly hung up on me.
You are of course correct Shradha. It took a while of digging around and finding the right number to call, but after some time on the phone with some actual representatives of PayPal I was able to sort out what had happened and ensure that no attempted fraudulent purchases were successful on my account.
The representatives I spoke with were Sisa, who then passed me up to Cherie (apologies if I misspelled either of their names). Both were wonderfully helpful both in sorting out what had occurred, how to reverse the few changes that were made to my account (the fraudsters had "upgraded" my account from personal to business and were attempting to use my account as a go-between to defraud other people - CoinBase Billing was the name of the "business" they were attempting to pass me off as). Sisa and Cherie were also both helpful in reassuring me that no purchase attempts were successful and none were still pending.
Any complaints I have with PayPal itself at this point have to do with how difficult it was to find the number to call. You attempt to funnel me through a bunch of FAQ, both on the website and then once I call the number, again funnel me through a bunch of FAQ with a voice responsive audio bot. In the event that some purchase attempts were being made successfully, this wasted time would have been far more than annoying. For a service such as PayPal it needs to be much simpler to call and get to talk to a live person.
For any that come along reading this later on, the most helpful heads up I received from speaking with Sisa and then Cherie, was the revelation that PayPal's emails are always personalized. The scammers will attempt to replicate this in such a way as to fool you, and try to get you to react quickly without thinking and either click their links or get on the phone with them where they will attempt to talk you through giving them control of your computer.
The part there where it says "Hello, your payment went through successfully..." - where this a legitimate PayPal email notification, it would have just said "Hello Reiknar" followed by the body of the email. Also worth noting, PayPal wouldn't have sent me an "Invoice".
I did make the mistake of giving these people access to my PayPal account, during that short time they were able to change my account from personal to business with the name CoinBase Billing. Same name as in the original "Invoice' they sent me. At that point, emails from PayPal itself were indeed coming through, at first with the header "Hello Reiknar", but I was further confused by one that said, "Hello CoinBase". Cherie was the person that helped me sort that out.
As it turns out, PayPal's web layout is VERY different for a business account vs a personal account. Having only ever had a personal account, I didn't realize this, and just though the differences I was seeing were the result of updates to a service I haven't made frequent use of in the last four years or so. As I mentioned to Cherie before we were done on the phone, the business account layout is much more helpful, easier to understand and navigate. There is no good reason for the difference in layouts, unless it's PayPal's way of trying to get money from their users. See, a business account gets charged a % fee on all transactions... personal accounts do not. Would you pay a % fee on all transactions just to have a more user friendly layout? I won't. I'll just be less likely to make use of PayPal's services in the future. I'll maintain my PayPal account just in case I do need it for something, but I will attempt to find another way to pay for what I need whenever possible. As noted, I haven't actually used my account in about 4 years now. Not missing it really. I DID try recently to use PayPal, to simplify funding a KickStarter I wanted to support. Turns out, they don't accept PayPal. Perhaps THAT is something PayPal should look into, it's not so useful when merchants reject your form of payment.
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